So, let's talk about doing nothing. A guy called Wallas published a book and in it included talking about *stages of creativity*. So, let's look at these four stages. So, they talk about *preparation*. That's the things you do like gathering information, getting yourself into the space that understands a problem. *Incubation* – which is a period when you're not directly thinking about the problem,
but it's bubbling around somewhere. *Illumination*, which is that 'Ah! Got it!'. And then, and people use different words for this – *verification*, checking whether it really does do the job, or *implementation*, actually using it to make something. So, you know, this might be our to-do list apps thing. This might be you get together all of the old other people's to-do list apps;
you perhaps do lots of focus groups or ask people about their practices. You might look at paper to-do lists as well as electronic ones. You get all of that together. And then, you go to sleep and wake up in the morning, just like I did with my time management stuff, and... 'Ah! I know what to do!' But it might be instantly; it might be a few days later. You know – or it might be you go for a walk or something like that.
This incubation stage is often seen as being perhaps one – lots of researchers have actually studied it because it's so interesting, but often the most important bit because *it's the thing that allows you to go on*. Often if you do the preparation and then just try to do – this is the (inaudible) situation – you've gathered everything; you think, 'Now I've got to have my idea! Now I've got to have my idea!'.... Stuck – you know. But it's the process; you say,
'Okay. Just put it aside. Get out of my mind for a while.' Do something else; come back to it. Now, this is true of puzzles – I don't know if you've ever done a crossword or something like that; You've done the clues, and there's... 'Goodness knows what that is!' You come back to it the next day and you look at it and think, 'Oh, that's obvious.' Now, there are a number of reasons for this and people debate these reasons. There's a lot of research being done on this, but it's actually quite hard to be conclusive.
Is it that – you know – while you're sleeping your unconscious mind is tootling over the things and is actually solving it for you? There is some evidence that's going on. It may simply be, and there's certainly a large element of it and it's probably a bit of each, that having come to it, you get caught in a way of looking at a problem. Creativity researchers talk about *fixation*. You've got a problem and you can only see one way to deal with it.
By going away and coming back, you just do it afresh; you just see it from a new angle and 'Ah! Easy.' A very common thing to happen. And it's really just about resetting your mind. And if you look at the stories of major insights, so there's minor insights and major insights with some of the really big points, 'Oh my goodness!' things. So, a classic is the story of benzene rings and how the chemist who discovered those had this dream about snakes swallowing each other's tails,
sometimes on the back of a bus, and wakes up and thinks, 'Ah! That's the way benzene tings are all linked together.' Actually, if you dig back, you find the story has all sorts of weird roots and it probably never happened. But even if it did, it's partly, if the thoughts are in your head, a random thing that you see. It need not be a dream. It might be something that was *somebody else's dream* for instance,
might spark this or it's the very fact that it just kicks you into thinking about something in a different way. So, anyway, how incubation happens – there's a lot of debate on that. What is certainly the case is *creating situations* *where incubation can occur are things you can do something about*. So, these 10 different things – we've talked about these already: sleeping itself. So, going to sleep is a positive action as well as
actually making you much more healthy if you have a good sleep, but in terms of creativity. Going for a shower, taking a walk, washing the dishes – we saw all of these. These are all things where *your mind is left open*, as opposed to things which eat up your thoughts. I've got an image here of a book called *Bored and Brilliant*. Manoush Zomorodi talks about actually being bored, and I think actually really means being bored, but also means
these activities, doing these activities where you actually *don't have something filling every moment* are the things that open you up and allow you to suddenly have those sparks of insight. And by 'sparks of insight', I don't mean inventing new chemistry; I mean just working out how to solve that little UX problem you've got, that coding problem you've got. And I've said not social media – it's not just social media, but there are
a range of things you can do, you can fill your mind with, which fills your mind so that you've got nothing left over, but actually doesn't help you to achieve things. And there is a tendency – and, again, the reason I popped this book up, because it emphasizes the fact that we are living in a world where we fill more and more of our time with this kind of busywork. I've talked about busywork as the kind of busywork that
doesn't occupy your mind, but there is this other kind of thing and social media presence often is like this; that eats up your process, eats up your emotional sense, eats up your time, but doesn't leave you an openness. So, *deliberately trying to find things that open you up*. Now, I have almost a mortal fear of being bored, of being stuck with nothing to do. In fact, if I'm going to go somewhere, say it's to,
it might be in a theater or a film or some – waiting for a bus – where I think I'm going to have to stand around or sit around for a period and nothing to do, I actually get palpitations. I can feel – you know that panic feeling because I want (inaud.). So, however, when I walked a thousand miles around Wales, I thought I would be bored for huge tracks of the time. And I got a little iPod Shuffle and had a little tiny one
that I thought I'd be able to wear. I never used it. And there is something particularly about activities such as walking, but I said equally washing the dishes, things like that, which mean that you don't get bored in the sense you think 'Oh, I really don't want to be here anymore,' but actually allow you to be open and free. So, create those situations and you're actually likely to be in that position where the chuntering that goes... whether it's unconscious processing,
whether it's just seeing things from a different angle – who knows – don't actually from a practical point of view don't care, but these are certainly the things that are likely to help you get insight. Effectively, it's all about *giving yourself space to think, to not think*, and in not thinking about a particular problem, you actually are more likely to find a solution to it.